Seattle Socialist :
The Workingman’s Paper

Abstract:For ten years, this weekly newspaper was the strongest voice for
socialism in the Pacific Northwest. Edited by Hermon Titus, The Socialist was acerbic, witty, and
often sectarian.

The Socialist Educational Union was incorporated in
Washington on September 16, 1900 under the terms of Chapter 193 of the state’s
codes governing “social, charitable and other associations.” Its main purpose
was the publishing of The Socialist
newspaper launched the previous month. One of the articles of incorporation
specified that only members of the Social Democrat Party could serve on the
board of the Socialist Educational Union. The newspaper came out weekly for
most of its existence, (supplemented by occasional daily editions) and
contained a mixture of articles explaining the nature of socialism,
anti-capitalism rhetoric, platforms for local election races, news of socialism
victories in the US and Europe, guest articles by well known socialists, such
as Eugene Debs and Upton Sinclair, as well as essays on socialist virtues. The
newspaper also frequently attacked its press rivals in Seattle, as well as
political rivals within the socialism movement. It provided wide coverage of
news of interest to its audience – strikes, free speech efforts and the famous
Haywood trial in Idaho. Throughout its 10 years, The Socialist used cartoons to lampoon capitalism and issues it
perceived as anathema to socialism. For a brief period, it even sub-titled
itself as a “cartoon weekly.”The
educational union owned its own press operation, The Trustee Printing Company
in Seattle, which it bought to avoid paying “capitalist printing companies.” A
founding member of the educational union that published the newspaper was a
physician, Hermon Titus. (See editorial staff.)

StatusExtensive but not complete set of newspapers
microfilmed. University of Washington, Microform and Newspaper Collections:
A2663

Editorial staff :None listed initially but beginning in
1907 when a masthead listing editorial staff appeared in the Seattle
publication, Hermon Titus was the editor. (In a letter to the Post Office in
1902 Titus signed his name as “business manager.”) He stayed in the role of
editor through the last existing issue of the newspaper in August, 1910. Titus
was also listed in the masthead of The
Socialist, published in Toledo, Ohio and during its time in Caldwell, Idaho
(June, 1906 - November, 1908). According to historian Carlos Schwantes,
Radical Heritage, Titus moved
The Socialist to Toledo because he
regarded it as the “industrial center of the United States.” Since the Toledo
operation was not successful, Titus used the pretext of the Haywood trial to
move the paper again – to Caldwell. Titus had ambitions of converting Idaho into
the “first socialist state.” Schwantes asserted that Titus remained in Idaho a
mere three months. The paper itself remained in Caldwell much longer, though it
is possible that Titus himself was in Seattle. From Seattle, Titus organized
free-speech demonstrations in defiance of authorities. The issue became a kind
of campaign carried extensively by The Socialist. Imprisonment of
participants allowed the paper to also report on the squalid conditions in the
Seattle city jail, which the newspaper described as “Seattle’s black hole.”

After
1910, the final year of The Socialist,
Hermon Titus is listed in Polk’s Seattle Directory as the editor of Workingman’sMagazine
(1911), and subsequently in 1912 as editor of The Four Hour Day. His wife, Hattie, is listed as the business agent
for this publication.

In later years, The Socialist listed separate editors
for Oregon, Idaho and Washington, as well as special contributors on such areas
as socialism and science; socialism and the farmer; socialism and the middle
class. In 1909, from a list of 17 contributors and staff members, four were
women: Bessy Fiset, assistant editor; Hattie Titus (wife of the editor),
advertising manager; Mrs Floyd Hyde, contributor on socialism and the home; Lulu
Ault, circulation manager.Other listed staff included: Erwin Ault,
managing editor; Arthur Jensen, assistant editor; Ryan Walker, cartoonist; John
F. Hart, cartoonist; Richard Krueger, Washington State editor; Thomas Coonrod,
Idaho State editor; Thomas Sladden, Oregon State editor.

Lineage: In 1901, the banner indicated that The Socialist merged with The New Light, a Socialist weekly founded
in 1899 in Port Angeles, Washington by EE Vail. 1905 and1906 editions of
The Socialist appeared in the UW collection with a Toledo address,
suggesting that Titus, the named editor and a founder of the Socialist
Educational Union in Seattle, moved there for a period and kept the paper going
from Ohio. Since not all numbered copies are within the UW collection, it is not
clear if the Seattle-based Socialist published simultaneously with the Socialist in Toldeo.
With issue 298 in June, 1906, the paper moved to Caldwell, Idaho, where it
published through issue 319 (November 24, 1908). Editor Titus wrote then that
the newspaper would henceforth be published in Seattle. Again, numbered issues,
although not complete, are sequential from Seattle to Toledo to Caldwell and
back to Seattle. Apparently, the last issue came out in August, 1910.

Summary

The Socialist –
The Workingman’s Paper was produced by an arm of the Social
Democrat Party in Seattle with the express purpose of
educating workers on socialists issues and positions, and
spreading news about socialism and labor union activities,
especially strikes. In addition to its line of socialist
propaganda, it provided news coverage of socialist
candidates running (and their socialist platform) for office
throughout Washington State, as well as school board races
in Seattle. The level of coverage given Congressional and
presidential races of 1900, 1902, 1904, 1906 and 1908 varied
according to the number of socialist candidates taking part.
The Socialist took seriously its claim that it was
the paper for the working man, and often labeled stories of
strikes as news that could not be seen in other,
establishment newspapers.

Where it supported socialist goals or
as a way to indicate the failures of capitalism, fiction was
also used in the paper. Commentaries, penned by notable
socialists, including novelists Upton Sinclair and Jack
London, as well as translations of socialist writings from
Europe (Karl Marx’s among them) did, on occasion, almost
fill entire issues. Cartoons played a prominent role in the
weekly four pages of The Socialist, dominating the
front page on a number of occasions. The cartoons, which
were mostly well executed, included both original drawings
by Ryan Walker and John Hart and those published elsewhere.
Certain cartoons were used in more than once.

The general tumult that accompanied
socialist organizations in the US and Europe did not escape
The Socialist. Over the years of its publication, it
condemned anarchists, criticized the middle classes, and
denounced the national Social Democrat Party. Routinely, it
lambasted the Seattle Daily Times and Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, the local (pro-business,
pro-establishment) dailies.

The financial position of The
Socialist was frequently tenuous. In several issues it made
direct appeals for financial support through donations or
subscriptions. It appeared to be on the brink of not
publishing – or claimed to – and once apologized for having
fewer pages than normal. Beginning in January, 1901,
following its merger with The New Light, the paper
began to run advertising from Seattle merchants. Among the
advertisers were the Frederick and Nelson department store,
Hotel Grand, several laundries and a bicycle manufacturer.

Selected
extracts of coverage

Elections

The state
of Washington has given a Socialist percentage much above
the average in the United States, the equal of
Massachusetts, twice that of New York and probably exceeding
that of California. Comrades, shake!

The Socialist, November 25, 1900

As a newspaper propagating the
position of the Social Democrat Party, The Socialist
provided coverage of Social Democrats running for office at
any level from city and county positions to Congress and
President. Thus, in its first year of publication, it gave
front page coverage to the campaign and platform of
socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs as well as
those running for local office[1].
It provided a full reporting of election returns from
throughout Washington state, starting with the first year of
publication. An estimated 3-percent of the voter turnout
went to Socialists running for all state offices in 1900. A
style of upbeat coverage of socialist candidates’
performance typified The Socialist’s writings of
election results, even when showings at the polls were
rather modest. When local results did not support the
propaganda of The Socialist, it would use socialist
victories from elsewhere in the US and even Europe to
indicate that socialists could win elections. The socialist
mayor of Haverhill, Mass., John Chase, was held as an
example of what could be achieved. This was reported in the
issues of November 25 and December 2, 1900. Two local
mayoral candidates, E. Lux, running in Whatcom (now known as
Bellingham) and Everett hopeful H. P. Whartenby were given
front-page billing with photographs in the Dec. 2,1900
issue.

In November 7, 1905,
The Socialist provided a detailed breakdown of election
returns from throughout Washington, as well as Idaho, Oregon
and key summaries from New York, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The front page included a personal note from Eugene Debs
thanking everyone, and giving particular praise to the
Red Special band, a musical group that accompanied him
on a nationwide tour. “At many points it was just what was
needed to kindle enthusiasm and round out the meeting and
give it the power to stir the crowd into action,” he wrote.

Based on election returns in
Washington for 1905, The Socialist predicted a total
turnout for socialist candidates of 17,000 votes out of
200,000, compared to 10,000 in 1901.

With the emergence of public
education, and elections to school boards, The Socialist
saw an opportunity to champion the end of child labor and
provision of free education. In the 1901 Seattle School
Board elections campaign, The Socialist published the
following platform:

1. Enough school buildings of moderate cost to be built
immediately to accommodate all, instead of costly palaces
for the few.

2.More teachers, and better paid.

3. Teachers tenure permanent during efficiency.

4.Free meals and free clothing, if needed, to keep
children from the necessity of work.

Note

The curious wording under point 9 may
reflect some discomfort within the Socialist movement toward
education by those who may have lacked formal schooling.

By way of supporting the two Socialist
candidates for school board, including Socialist Educational
Union co-founder Hermon Titus,The Socialist ran a
picture of boys sweeping the street outside a Seattle
department store. The newspaper asked: “Why do these
10-year-olds have to work from 7:30 to 6 every day?” If the
socialist candidates get elected, promised the newspaper,
those boys would be attending school – fed and clothed, if
necessary. The newspaper further urged its readers to
register to vote. In earlier coverage, The Socialist had
pointed out the 6000 discrepancy between the census figures
for school-age children in Seattle (17,500) and school
enrollment (11,000).It concluded that the children of the
poor must work. It suggested that by electing candidates
Denny and Patterson, poor children would remain in “poverty
and toil.”

Opposition to the established press

In 1900, Seattle had a thriving and
highly competitive press. According to Polk’s Seattle
Directory of that year, 5 daily and 12 weekly English
language newspapers were published within the city. The best
funded were the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle
Daily Times, whose circulations The Socialist
trailed. But that did not prevent it from taking frequent
swipes at the bigger newspapers. It often lampooned the
pro-business press of the city in cartoons, and editorials.
Times’ publisher Colonel Alden Blethen was nicknamed “the
kernel.”

The Socialist
took particular glee in telling its own readers that certain
stories were not reported by the big dailies. In the March
20, 1903 issue, it pointed out that neither of the two
dominant dailies had covered a Socialist meeting attended by
some 2000 people, which The Socialist described as
the biggest meeting inthe city in past six
months.

As an alternative to the pro-business
writings of the large dailies, the Socialist also acted as a
contrarian, challenging assumptions on a wide range of
issues, including the role of women, public ownership of
utilities; Chinese immigration limits and industrialist
Andrew Carnegie, who bequeathed libraries to Seattle and
Tacoma.

In an article titled, Good King
Carnegie – But Under the Smoke and Chimneys What? The
Socialist compared steel magnate Carngie to Napoleon
Bonaparte.

Where did
the Pittsburg Iron Master get his power and wealth? By
robbing the workingmen of America. Some of you say, no, he
got it by honest means. We socialists say no to you, and we
provide to you he got it by the sweat and blood of the men
who working in his foundries.

The Socialist, May 7, 1901

Where
the paper most significantly differed in covering news
events was in its reporting of strikes. Since most
newspapers were also business enterprises that succeeded or
failed on the basis of profits, most newspaper proprietors
saw labor organizations through the lens of business
operators. Consequently, their coverage of labor and trade
unions tended to reflect this in-built bias at the
turn-of-century. The exact opposite held true for The
Socialist – it was not established as a profit-making
business enterprise and it’s bias was to the workers and
against the bosses. The Socialist provided a
counterbalance (and admittedly, a self-serving one at that)
to the dearth of coverage and anti-labor slant typically
found in 1900-era newspapers.

Labor issues

In 1903, the three major electric
street railway companies on Puget Sound – The Tacoma Railway
& Power Company, The Seattle Electric Company and the
Interurban Company – were all owned by Boston-based Stone &
Webster. Workers struck the Stone and Webster companies over
union recognition and union negotiating power, according
to The Socialist. Six hundred drivers, conductors and
maintenance workers in Seattle alone were involved. The
Socialist issued daily strike editions on March 27, 28, 29,
1903.

“Workingmen
unite,” is the Socialist motto now adopted by all unions.
“The isolated laborer,” said Marx, “is powerless against the
capitalist.” Capital knows that and will grant everything
except recognition of the union. They must keep the right to
hire scabs. Scabs are the death of unions. Therefore scabs
must be cultivated.The Socialist, March 28, 1903

The Seattle Street Railway
Employees Union faced formidable opposition, not only from
the company but from strike-breakers and the city
establishment. A court order was issued forbidding street
railway company employees from speaking to each other and
Seattle’s mayor deputized 18 strike-breakers as special
policemen, issuing them each with a badge and a gun,
according to the March 28 issue.

The Socialist alluded to
“violence, intimidation, hoodlums, riots” evidently reported
by the other Seattle newspapers, and placed the blame for
unspecified civil disturbance on the Mayor Humes for
deputizing strike-breakers.

“There was not a sign of
riot in town until Humes appointed 18 scabs as special
policemen and armed them with guns and a little brief
authority. Every demonstration was wholly good natured.
Nothing worse than a few eggs thrown. Everybody was laughing
all the while. When suddenly the Times and P-I and even The
Star begin to deprecate violence. . .people not on the scene
believe those ‘violence’ and ‘intimidation’ – all sorts of
things,” stated a front page article below a massive cartoon
depicting the Seattle Electric Company as a “hog.”

In contrast to Seattle,
the striking carmen in Tacoma did not break ranks. However,
The Socialists reported that drivers and conductors were
brought in from Seattle to operate the street cars in
Tacoma. The strikers in Tacoma were also faced with a court
injunction forbidden them to damage Tacoma Railway Co.
property, intimidate workers, persuade customers from using
the street cars and even from “confederating together.”
The Socialist, which carried the full terms of the
injunction, dismissed it as “harmless.” “Only forbids
threats and violence anyway – nothing to be afraid of.”

The strike lasted just
four days. Although the terms of the strike’s settlement in
Seattle and Tacoma were not laid out – as far as this
researcher could find – a later article in The Socialist
was critical of the settlement. Under a heading, Why
Strikes Fail, it described the street railway workers of
having “won everything except the strike.”

“The company reserves the
right to employ non-union men. This means the union has no
power to enforce better conditions, higher wages or shorter
hours.”

The newspaper goes on to
say that it was because “an army of unemployed” was willing
to work under any conditions that undermined the strike and
forced the union to accept the conditions of the company.
The Socialist suggested that a fear of being among the
unemployed caused the strikers to return to work.

The newspaper also
criticized labor leaders – especially Messrs Harmon and Rust
of the Washington Federation of Labor and Seattle Central
Labor Council respectively for not providing better guidance
to the “inexperienced” street car workers who had put on a
“magnificent” fight.

Here, The Socialist is
careful to praise the striking workers – who represented
both their readers and the volume of voters needed to elect
socialists candidates – while singling out labor leaders for
not providing the kind of support (not specified) the
strikers evidently deserved.

In August, 1903, the
newspaper carried a story of a wage claim (an increase from
23 cents to 30 cents an hour) being pressed by the street
car workers. Most of the article rounded condemned a mayoral
request to arbitrate the dispute, as well as chastising the
company for not granting the increase. The Socialist
converted the cost of paying the increase as $137,970, which
it claimed was equivalent to paying 4-percent interest on $3
million dollars.

“. . .that is, they can water their
stock to that amount. They can distribute blocks of stock in
hundreds of thousands of dollars, up to three million, where
it will do the most good.

“You see what you are up
against, boys? BIG CAPITAL. The only way to lick big capital
is at the Ballot Box - and don’t you forget that.”

The
Socialist, August 23, 1903

The Haywood trial

Nothing stirred the
editorial pages of The Socialist quite like the story
of the trial in Idaho of Western Federation of Miners
leader, “Big Bill” Haywood. Along with Charles Moyer and
George Pettibone, the state of Idaho kidnapped Haywood in
Denver and brought him to Boise to face charges involving
the bombing murder of Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg in
1905.

Idaho’s mining districts
had been the scene of much violent strife between miners and
mine owners. Perhaps sensing the importance of Idaho as the
source of socialist fervor, The Socialist relocated
to Caldwell (near Boise) in 1906. Or maybe the move was
because of the stature of Haywood and the sensational nature
of the impending trial. Hermon Titus, who appeared in the
masthead of The Socialist of Toledo as editor and who
evidently had relocated there from Seattle after helping to
form the Socialist Educational Union, became editor in
Caldwell.

Throughout the trail,
which started in 1907, The Socialist provided copious
coverage, claiming to scoop the Seattle dailies when the not
guilty verdict against Haywood was returned July 28. The
newspaper issued two special “extras” to report the news and
to reflect comment from the jury’s finding. In the August 3,
1907 issue datelined Seattle, a line drawing of Haywood
appeared with a caption: “a future president of the United
States.”

A Woman’s Place

The Socialist
raised the debate on the issues of women in society
throughout its period of publication. Although coverage of
women’s did not appear with high frequency, it was visited
with some regularity. In later issues of the paper, bylined
articles by Bessy Fiset addressed suffrage and other issues
related to women. On May 5,1901, a front page article
entitled Woman, The Slave of the Wage Slave explored
the concept of gender equality and economic independence for
women and the right to vote. It even examined the sexism
implicit among both genders towards expectation of the
qualities of boys versus girls.

“As a rule, before a boy has himself
issued from the petticoat stage he is made to realize what a
crime it is against boyhood to be termed a girl. And girls
are hampered by the unnatural limitations put upon them by
their mothers, more than by their fathers, in order to
properly or improperly fit them for Woman’s Sphere. They
must play with dolls and learn to sew, while boys play out
of door games and learn to smoke and chew and swear.”

The article, which supported a woman’s
right to vote, made clear that a vote for a Socialist
candidate would liberate women in other areas of their
lives.

By 1909, criticism of the
capitalist system as enslaving women even more than it did
enslave men had become a theme. In a front-page article
laying out the Washington State Socialist Party’s manifesto
for women (drawn up by the Woman’s State Executive
Committee), The Socialist stated:

Women of the working class can secure
their emancipation only through the abolition of the wage
system, which makes of them as wage earners, and as economic
slaves of wage earners, worse slaves than the men
themselves.

The Socialist, April 17, 1909

The article called upon women to hold
propaganda meetings, provide “revolutionary socialist” women
for lectures, educate women in revolutionary socialism,
spread propaganda and socialism clubs and organize “the
children of the proletariat” and to educate them in
class-consciousness. The article also asked: have you a
woman’s stamp on your card? It’s not clear if this was
addressed to men, or whether women could independently be
members of the Socialist Party.

Internal squabbles

Although disputes between
its various branches dogged the socialist movement in
Washington and elsewhere in the United States during the
1900-1914 period, the pages of The Socialist are
relatively free of articles on such disputes. As a paper
supporting the Social Democrat Party of Washington it often
blurred the distinction of “socialist” and “social
democrat.” It appeared to give broad support to “socialist”
candidates and “socialist” causes, without necessarily
identifying if those candidates or causes fitted strictly
within the goals of the Social Democrat Party. In this
respect, The Socialist may have been less dogmatic
than other socialist newspaper or simply was disinclined to
involve itself in internal disputes of the kind that wracked
other newspapers. (See citation for other newspapers on this
Web site.)

However, there were
exceptions. Early on, the paper distanced itself from the
anarchy movement by roundly condemning the assassination of
President William McKinley in 1901. In fact, the first issue
after his death at the hands of a professed anarchist
appeared with a black border.

Despite this, it’s noticeable that
“revolution” and “revolutionary” are still seen frequently
in The Socialist in the years following the paper’s
condemnation of the McKinley assassination. Although it
never explained in its pages how the revolution would be
achieved (by the ballot box is implied, given the coverage
of election and socialist candidates), use of the term
brought dissension that surfaced in the pages of the paper
in the summer of 1909.

Following a state
convention of the Socialist Party (the ninth annual),
national committee member Emil Herman wrote a front-page
article critical of the state party official who lead
maneuvers to silence certain local chapters at the
convention. It accused W. Waynick, temporary state secretary
of the party, of being manipulated by “rank middle class
opportunists” in silencing the representatives of 54 locals
at the convention and “destroying the Revolutionary
Socialist Party of this state.”

A follow-up article the
next week – upon publication of the convention minutes –
further accused Waynick and others of gagging the
revolutionary socialists and passing rule-changes that
limited the existence of locals within cities. This, the
article explained, was designed to get reformists back in
power in Seattle. “Reformists,” it must be assumed, were of
the middle-class stripe opposed by the newspaper.

The Workingman’s Paper does not seek
to form a separate party opposed to other working-class
parties. It supports the UNION of Wage-Workers. . . the
immediate aim of the Workingman’s paper is the same as that
of all other really proletariat organs, namely: Formation of
the proletariat into one class, overthrow of the bourgeois
supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The Workingman’s Paper, January 1910

The dispute continued for months in
the pages of The Socialist, which in a September 25
issue carried articles representing both sides of the
debate, though favoring its own writer (who represented its
position) with considerably more space.

On October 4, 1909, The
Socialist proclaimed in a front-page article:
Socialist Party Turns Populist. The article cited the
recent decision by the national organization of the party to
amend the wording of “general demands” laid out by the
Socialist Party.Those included the collective
ownership of railroads, telegraph, telephone and land.
The national committee removed “land” from its list of
demands, a move opposed by the Washington State delegation.

Further divisions opened
up locally over the possible inclusion of bankers, ranchers,
lawyers, college professors and others as members of the
proletariat. The division between what was described as a
“one-class party” versus a “two-class party” was covered in
the October 9, 1909 Socialist.

It’s clear that the
newspaper – or at least its influential staff – identified
with the industrial wage-earners as being the basis for
revolutionary socialism. By October 30, the paper carried a
resolution from the Local Seattle Socialist Party denouncing
the national organization as “dominated and controlled by
the middle classes” and therefore “unable to perform the
mission of a working class party.”

At the root of the dispute
was a fight between editor Titus and Walter Thomas Mills, a
college lecturer, journalist, minister, evangelist and
defender of temperance. Certainly the intellectual equal of
Titus, Mills used his writing skills to skewer Titus and his
“bogus organization.” Mills was a reform socialist; Titus a
revolutionary socialist.

When both factions claimed
to represent the party in Seattle, the national executive
intervened to broker the dispute at the 1908 national
convention. The bitter factional fight dragged on into 1909
and a state convention in Everett. Here, Titus, a
college-educated physician, warned of the dangers of
middle-class opportunists taking over the party. W.H.
Waynick, a sawmill worker, held sway over a national
executive committee-sanctioned referendum to decide which
faction should rule Washington socialists. Titus lost.

The paper broke ranks with the
Socialist Party locally and nationally by then carrying the
manifesto of a new organization named The United Wage
Workers of Washington. It was an opening salvo in a dispute
that lead to the idea of a new political party (a labor
party) and the dropping of the name “socialist.” (A court
case involving use of the name had been heard by King County
Superior Court and the paper’s opponents, including Waynick,
apparently won the right to use of the name.)

By this point, the
distancing from the Socialist Party structure was evident at
the newspaper, which began appearing under the name, The
Workingman’s Paper, with The Socialist in small
letters below the main title. The last known issue of the
paper, which appeared in August, 1910 included an inside
page article containing the manifesto of the Labor Party of
Seattle.

Financial position

“Ten weeks for 10 cents”
was the launch offer of The Socialist in August,
1900. Over the years, the masthead price fluctuated – some
issues appeared priced 50 cents, others two cents and five
cents, which may reflected fund-raising efforts or a desire
to impart the idea that there was a much higher value to the
information than what the newspaper sold for.

Under a heading, “No Private Profits –
All for Socialism,” The Socialist carried the
articles of incorporation of the Socialist Education Union,
set up to oversee publication of the newspaper. The paper
set an early goal of attaining a circulation of 2000.
Frequent reminders were published to encourage subscription
orders.

For the first five months,
The Socialist did not carry any advertising. But with
the merging of The New Light in 1901, the paper did start
carrying local advertising from Seattle merchants. This grew
over the years to include advertising for national
companies, such as Columbia Bicycles, and household
appliances and furniture. Frederick and Nelson’s department
store were among the Seattle companies whose ads ran on a
regular basis.

Even with advertising
income The Socialist was not very solvent. Its ability to
qualify for reduced rate mailing through categorization as a
newspaper was sufficiently important to warrant extensive
coverage of a dispute with Edwin Madden, third assistant
Postmaster General in Seattle in 1901-02.

Madden contested The
Socialist’s qualification for third-class postage rates,
claiming in a letter that most of its subscriber base
received the newspaper free. The issue became a rallying
point for the paper, allowing it both to chastise Madden
(and pillor him in cartoons), make the case that other
newspapers seemed to have no difficulty qualifying and
encouraging readers to send in proof of subscription and
encourage others to buy the paper. On May 1, 1902, the paper
proclaimed “2500 new subscribers for Madden.”

In addition to seeking new
subscriptions, The Socialist appealed to readers to
raise the capital necessary to purchase its own press. It
must be assumed that this effort was successful. Reports of
the Trustee Printing Company appear in The Socialist.

By summer, 1904 the
financial plight of the newspaper had evidently continued to
worsen. In a manner by then familiar to readers, The
Socialist appealed for help.

Now, comrades and friends, in spite of
all our economies and sacrifices, we cannot pay our way and
maintain the standard of the paper. Our arrears on current
expenses up to date, not counting what the Editor has
furnished, amount to about six hundred dollars. It does seem
a great deal. But when you have not six hundred cents to pay
with, it is as great as so many thousands.

The Socialist, June 26, 1904

Other appeals
for financial help followed at irregular intervals. By
January, 1909 under a heading, WARNING! DANGER! The
Socialist reminded readers that “it has been a long
time since the management of The Socialist has asked
for aid.” The editorial went on to say that for months the
publication had been surviving on job printing and
advertising revenue but both of those incomes had recently
declined. The paper asked its readers for $500 immediately
to pay off “our most pressing obligations.”

The paper
somehow managed to limp along, and used the impending
special issue for Labor Day (May 1, 1909) to encourage
readers to buy additional souvenir copies. In the same
issue, The Socialist stated that it was still $300 short in
its appeal for $500, but also proclaimed that but for the
“interference of those who have claimed to be friends” would
not be in any trouble. The paper ran a full list of accounts
from its business manager (Edwin Ault) detailing all debts
and income.

On May 1, the
paper crowed that its status was “climbing,” having
apparently met its debts. “Once more The Socialist can
announce to its anxious friends and to its still more
anxious enemies that it will appear regularly and on time
each week and continue to be the fighting champion of
Proleterian Socialism.”

No other
appeals for cash appear in the final year of the paper. The
last issue in the collection, dated August 20, 1910 neither
describes itself as the last issue nor mentions any
impending financial problem. It is possible that other
issues appeared beyond those in the University of Washington
collection but given the rift between editor Titus and the
reformist faction with the Socialist Party he may well have
decided to simply fold the paper, which had begun appearing
under the title The Workingman’s Paper.

Quick Index
This research paper includes information on the following
people, events and items.

The Socialist contained many articles
about issues affecting laborers living in Seattle and Washington, such as
the city's education system and Free Speech Fight in Spokane.

(November 24, 1906, p.1)

(February 12, 1910, p.1)

National Labor News

The Socialist also reported on
national labor news. The arrest and trial of Western Federation of
Miners leaders for allegedly murdering the former governor of Idaho prompted
many articles in the paper as well as special editions.

(August 18, 1906, p.1)

(July 28, 1906, p.1)

Theory

The paper ran frequent articles about
socialist theory, from reprinting experts from famous authors' works, to
advocating their own views of scientific socialism.